Thursday, January 04, 2007

Great Moments in Sportswriting, Part CLVXXIII

From Ivan Meisel of ESPN, opining on Alabama's hiring of Nick Saban, a peripatetic genius of the gridiron:

It may fly in the face of recent history to believe that Alabama should have hired someone for whom the program would be a step up. They have tried that in the last four hires over 10 years, and Mike DuBose, Dennis Franchione, Mike Price and Mike Shula didn't work.

(Snip... two paragraphs)

If Saban wins and bolts, as he did at Michigan State and LSU, or if he fails to win $32 million worth of games, Saban will have done more to make Alabama football smaller than anything the three Mikes ever did. The way to success in the SEC, as Auburn, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida have illustrated, is to hire coaches on their way up who will build programs that last.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Who knows why...

...I'm doing this, but I am.

Technorati Profile

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Coast to riposte


Coast to Coast, the early a.m. radio show on AM radio, is considered by obsessives and lunatics to be the CNN of supernatural, conspiratorial and extraterrestrial phenomena. Originally hosted by Ur-crackpot Art Bell, who was replaced by the more genially paranoid George Noory, the show features a companion web site where listeners can post additional "proof" of their otherwordly experiences, as if the word of someone blathering about aliens at 2 a.m. after being on hold for 90 minutes isn't enough.

Alas, a perusal of the site's "images" section may serve to disappoint those who "want to believe":

o THE HAUNTED MICROWAVE: Marijuana may stave off Alzheimer's disease, but its effects on the deductive faculties of youths remain unfortunate.

o "OLD SEA HAG": Here's guessing his girlfriend took "on the personality" every 28 days.

o THANKS, KID!: Apparently, the "monster" had huge tits and blonde hair.

The photo begs the question of whether it's a good or bad thing for a philanderer to have a wife that stupid. I do know a few guys with ostensibly intelligent spouses who get more trim than a hedge, so I'll venture it's a bad thing.

o "LABIALITY OF MOOD": If this doesn't convince you there's some seriously spooky shit out there, then maybe the fact that its post-hypnotic creators have "been the subject of a Canadian documentary and have done a guest spot on Darkness Radio" will. But that's what happens when you get high at the "famous Skinwalker ranch."

o "YOU TELL ME WHAT THIS IS!": I don't know. A fuckin' bush, maybe?

o THE GRASSY KNOLL: Nobody's fired a gun in Dallas for over 40 years.

o CROP CIRCLES: You know how I know crop circles are the product of alien spaceships? Because people in rural areas are so busy they'd never have time to crush some wheat.

o RETURN OF THE DEMON: It looks like pussy to me.

o DUUUUUUUUDE: Our Lord and Savior later turned male plants into some serious skunk weed.

o BLACK HELICOPTER: Proof positive that helicopters can be painted black.

No, man... read the guy's story. It's the context, man. THE CONTEXT!

o SHADOW ATTACK: It's refreshing to read a supernatural being will transcend time and space, life and death, being and nothingness just to punch a guy in the face. Nice straight right! Maybe he's a southpaw whom other "shadow people" won't fight, at least not this early in their careers. If so, he needs a new promoter.

On the bright side, this is evidence that if you're ever haunted by a hot lady ghost, the fact she's dead doesn't mean you can't fuck her, at least theoretically.

Friday, September 22, 2006

This Man on Women - Nos. 69-60



Line 'em up, knock 'em down. Another ten desirables:

69 (!). Rachel Weisz: The "thinking man's beauty," blah, blah, blah. If so, one might ask when thinking, what does thought have to do with the price of tea in China? One is here to prioritize fantasies in the pyramidally-structured hierarchy of self-abuse, for Christ's sake.

68. Melania Knauss: I thought the deal with Slovenian models is there's an inverse correlation between between hotness and Slovenian-ness. Did I mention she looks German?

67. Catherine Zeta-Jones: Not with your dick. Ms. Zeta-Jones is one of those chicks who makes a decent impression at first, then uglifies like Dorian Gray's portrait upon further reflection, so much so that Michael Douglas's Karloffian turn as her husband seems a step up for her.

66. Jennifer Garner: Nothing to sneeze at, of course, but I've heard informed speculation she makes vanilla taste like pomegranate.

65. Jennifer Esposito: Spike Lee nailing her kinda' ruins it, but there's a certain functionality to her looks that wedges her into the prestigious number 65 position in the askmen.com Hall of Fame.

64. Alyssa Milano: Prettier with earplugs. Just a guess.

63. Jaime Pressly: Anti-zaftig, if that's your thing. I know the phrase "I wouldn't throw her out of bed" means nothing coming from me, but Ms. Pressly looks like an 85-year-old man's idea of what a desperate, thirtysomething male thinks is hot. And while I know men complain that hot woman are humor-impaired, her alleged comic chops don't move me one way or the other.

62. Holly Valence: (VAY-lence) 1. The combining capacity of an atom or radical determined by the number of electrons that it will lose, add, or share when it reacts with other atoms.; 2. The last name of a chick I'd do even though I have no idea who the hell she is.

61. Jennifer Connelly: I used to masturbate "to" her constantly until someone mentioned she looked like my mom. Talk about nipping that shit in the bud.

60. Leeann Tweeden: Chaos theory needs no further proof beyond the fact that the only reason Ms. Tweeden's not spinning around a pole in Jacksonville is the years-old flapping of a butterfly's wings over the Kamchatka Peninsula.

This Man on Women - Nos. 79-70



Our next group of ten babes:

79. Zhang Ziyi: She's a cutie, but she's no Sung Hi Lee.

78. Uma Thurman: I sometimes get the feeling that gay guys, when they're sitting around drinking white wine coolers and chewing the fat, always settle on Ms. Thurman when the conversation turns to, "Okay - if somebody put a gun to your head, which stupid bitch would you agree to sleep with?"

77. Heather Graham: She's pure, unadulterated ho-bag, and that's a genuine compliment said with the unfiltered sincerity of an Americorp's volunteer helping folks gut their houses in the post-Katrina Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. A national treasure.

76. Christina Milian: She looks fresher than a grouper at the Fulton Street fish market.

75. Samaire Armstrong: Young? Check. Cute? Check. Monkey woman thing going? Check. But at certain angles, she reminds me of an adolescent Susan Powter, which makes my johnson sag like the third act of "Titus Andronicus."

74. Kate Beckinsale: Rumor has it she's gonna' let someone fuck her in the next few years.

73. Lisa Ray: Half-Indian, half-Polish. There's a joke in there somewhere - possible punch line: "so you know where to put your finger when you tell her she's a dumb motherfucker" - but she's all-hot in my book.

72. Rachel Bilson: Plastic surgery isn't just for the aged anymore, apparently.

71. Molly Sims: What's irritating about Sims is she thinks she has to have a personality, which in a woman as hot as her is so beside the point I get dizzy. It's like reading The New Testament for fishing tips.

I don't care if that doesn't make sense. Beautiful women make me crazy.

70. Natasha Bedingfield: New Zealand also gave us Peter Jackson. I consider it a wash, kiwis.

This Man on Women - Nos. 89-80



And now to review askmen.com's next deca-group of babes.

89. Tyra Banks: My mom always told me that if I didn't have anything nice to say about someone, don't say anything at all, so instead of mentioning how Ms. Banks's daytime talk show plays like a parody of a daytime talk show, I'll simply point out she has the nicest tits this side of John Travolta and be done with it.

88. Krista Allen: She looks like she could beat the shit out of me. And I don't mean that in the good way.

87. Rosario Dawson: Hispanic enough to be cast as an Afghan princess in Oliver Stone's "Alexander," Ms. Dawson possesses a high-wattage smile sure to give epilectics their well-deserved seizures and ivory poachers their "one-last-haul-and-I'm-out-of-the-business" reveries.

86. Hillary Duff: "Hillary turned 18 on September 28, 2005..." is the first phrase in askmen.com's "Career Highlight" profile of Ms. Duff. So you're not a pedophile anymore.

85. Diane Lane: Is a gay guy the photo editor here? Of all the pictures of Ms. Lane traversing the Internet, surely there's one that doesn't make her look like Charles Bukowski's girlfriend. Frankly, it's a jarring image coming after Hillary Duff.

84. Alyson Hannigan: Lists like this always have a few mildly attractive women like Ms. Hannigan thrown in so you think there's a few famous, desirable women out there you could actually get. Stop thinking that. You can't.

83. Morgan Webb: Who?

82. Sung Hi Lee: The flower's a nice touch. So is everything else, but I'm sensing that "famous" has lost all meaning in the editorial offices of askmen.com.

81. Jennifer Lopez: Ms. Lopez must thank her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that good judgement has nothing to do with sex appeal, what with her frequent marriages and her use of the n-word as a song lyric. Not that I wouldn't bone her nine ways from Sunday, but there's a certain fatalism now involved when you tell your buddy how you'd bone her nine ways from Sunday. It's like two old men talking about the weather.

80. Blake Lively: And how! (That's her real name, too, not her stripper appellation.) I've always been a fan of her "hippie-chick-goes-to-the-prom" look, even though she thinks she invented it.

This Man on Women - Nos. 99 to 90



A flashy website called askmen.com has compiled a list of "The Top 99 Most Desirable Women," and though the compilation's organizing principle is difficult to glean, I'm assuming it's something along the lines of being hot and famous at the same time.

These are all fine women, but - alas - not without their flaws, which I detail below along with their assets:

99. Anna Kournikova: Compared to the near-fetal features of tennis's latest femme banale, Kournikova comes across like Jane Mansfield, and that's a good thing. I used to complain that Kournikova's eyes were too closely set together, but now I realize that's just my inner homo talking.

98. Piper Perabo: My disenfranchisement from popular culture indicates Ms. Perabo could give me an under-the-table handjob at The Subway Inn on 59th Street and I'd still not know who she was. The central photo shows an attractive woman with a slightly stupeified mien, so what's not to love?

97. Vanessa Marcil: Apparently, she's famous enough to get an inside ticket to the DVD release party for "Kill Bill: Volume 1," which is great! (Isn't "volume" just precious?) A comely lass, but I bet I'd get tired of her "great-to-see-you-until-I-realize-I-don't-know-who-you-are" smile after stalking her for six months.

96. Nicole Kidman: Since when did "class" become a synonym for "I just smelled a fart"? Aging, and not gracefully.*

95. Gabrielle Union: Another one I've never heard of. Her Barbie doll looks do leave me with the (no doubt) mistaken impression that she's one of the few black women I could boss around.

94. Bryce Dallas Howard: Like bonus tracks tacked on to the end of the first generation of CDs, Opie's daughter seems to have been inserted on the list to make sure critics like me are really paying attention. I am, and if this list were of "The Top 4,736,356,921 Most Desirable Women," Ms. Howard still wouldn't belong on it.

Yes, the "Opie's daughter" thing is a cheap shot.

93. Lucy Liu: That fake smile. That iron gaze. That user reputation. That bitch priestess countenance. Marry me, baby.

92. Vanessa Hessler: File under "CATEGORY: FANTASY; Subcategory: Au pair, naive."

What's troubling is that in the next week I'm going to mention to someone that I've never heard of Vanessa Hessler and he's going to look at me like I just got out of a cave in the Hindu-Kush.

91. Cameron Diaz: I didn't know how annoying a dopey, bubbly blonde could be until I watched Diaz do that routine for the fifth or sixth time. It produced suicidal feelings, and a few others I can't outline here in case I run for public office.

90. Amanda Bynes: If I had a daughter, I'd really hope she doesn't look like Ms. Bynes.

------
* That sentiment and others like it should not be confused with a refusal on my part to bone any of these chicks.

Friday, June 02, 2006

Meet the Press


There is little as striking as the difference between the English attitude towards the press versus that of bestial Americans. In Britain, one need not be of manor born to share the general notion that Fleet Street is a but a pen for a swinish horde, a boulevard of drunken louts whose familiarity with the truth resembles Quentin Crisp's conversancy with heterosexual sex. The lot of them, when carousing in pubs, seem nothing so much as the worst fantasies of Hieronymous Bosch - a collection of imps, daemons, and golems engaged in all manner of horrific perfidy. Tomfools, all.

In America, by contrast, journalists are given awards.

It would be easy to fob off the dissimilarity to the limitless depths of American imbecility - it truly is a well that will never run dry - but that would be engaging in the lazy, sophomoric "analysis" so typical of the Fourth Estate, as well as the Irish. I believe there is a more trenchant explanation.

First, however, it would be wise to characterize more clearly what the English and Americans have in mind when they picture their Platonic ideal of a reporter. Jeffrey Bernard, the late writer of The Spectator's "Low Life" column, leaps to mind for most Britains. A dispomaniac whose drunkeness would have been considered heroic if in fact it weren't so completely obscene, Bernard spent his days writing in a stupor, constantly medicating himself with scotch after scotch. His vomit-flecked typewriter regularly churned reams of calumny, libel and sedition, to the point where had he been writing a century earlier under the aegis of my ancestors, his life would have been cut short at the gallow's pole.

Alas, in the "anything goes" era England has endured for the last forty years, Bernard enjoyed a certain celebrity, though it was of the daft uncle variety. In spite of the fact I give no credit to those who parade their tolerance as a towering achievement, like a righteous manifestation of the Manhattan Project, it reflects rather well on the English that they have never given Bernard nor any other prevaricating scribbler the sort of power which would result in execution if misused. In the influence rankings of bourgeois careers, journalist rates somewhere between assistant manager of a bowling alley and oaffish mop handler at an adult book store. They're hardly worth the trouble of firing, never mind punishments more capital.

American democracy, on the other hand, has its price, and a large percentage of the bill stems from the press's sway over the unwashed. Any sentient being can see the idea of American journalists setting the intellectual agenda for the American body politic bears an uncanny resemblance to a blind Princess Diana leading an Afghani orphan through a Russian minefield. Could anyone be less suited to the task of true journalism than an American journalist?

Picture the prototypical hack, if you dare. Regardless of what university attended, this pale wretch undoubtedly festooned his dorm with a poster of Che Guevera, an upside down photograph of the planet Earth, and - as a tip of the hat to his god above all gods, irony - a black and white portrait of a bloated Elvis Presley, preferably the one where he receives a commendation from Richard Nixon. This boy's university days were not spent seeking knowledge and females, as were mine, but ginning up incidents of "racism" at his notorious hotbed of bigotry.

Seven years later, degree in hand, it's off to the races, so to speak. With the appearance and bearing of a fetal pig, this mooncalf compensates for his inability to move events by tendentiously describing them to fit his jaundiced view of the same. In England, of course, it hardly matters because peers like myself are able to crush dissent, restore order, and round up the usual suspects before anything gets out of hand. But in America, a commoner is just as likely as not to vote in accordance with the foolish "advise" - ahem, news - he's read recently in his newspaper. Such are the wages of your democracy and your first amendment, my American friend.

It would be one thing if American journalists would clownishly misinterpret and misrepresent events and simply leave it at that. Yet they insist on lowering the bar even further by doing so in the most witless, dull, and stupefying manner imaginable. Have you ever read a piece of American journalism pillar to post? Never has imbecility and soporiferousness commingled so effortlessly; it's a singular experience to be falling asleep while reading, then being asked to turn the page again. It's a wonder there's not a Pulitzer Prize for the induction of narcolepsy.

At least Bernard, however unwittingly, could turn a phrase or two, and English journalists, while downing "me fifteenth pint," occasionally will utter something witty. Not so their American brethren. Their glum prose reflects suitably their general glumness, a condition they variegate with ample infusions of obnoxious self-righteousness and appropriate self-loathing. Like feminists, journalists know there is no joke better than one left unsaid, and the presence of mirth near them is like garlic to vampires. Oh by all means, let's let them call the shots!

I've lived stateside for almost fifteen years, and while I view American culture as a vulgar parade of savagery, saying the same of American journalism seems almost a compliment, however unintended. Perhaps there's a word - uninvented, perhaps undiscovered - that can encompass the wholesale idiocy, joylessness, and unsophistication of reportage, American-style. If the Lord, for whatever perverse reasons, made me a newspaper editor, I'd assign my staff to seek out this gargantuan bon mot, confident in the knowledge it would forever remain a mystery.

- Twimbley Duddleston IV

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

"Lost" is Found

I know no one's asking, but has anyone noticed how Lost is coming to resemble the Ur-videogame Myst?

I realize Lost has lots of people - hot chicks too - while Myst featured, well, just you, but the idea of cavorting on a mysterious island with a bunch of puzzles cooked up by an evil genius joins these two works like shared organs between Siamese twins.

Fine by me. I tried playing Myst years ago, and not only could I not figure out any of the puzzles, I couldn't glean the object of the game. Chess, Monopoly, boxing, elections - I know what people need to do to win those competitions. Plus, there's incentive to play well or at least cheat dextrously, since the winner of each gets to nail the loser's wife until sunset. Usually that's an incentive.

What do you get for winning Myst? Porn's already free. Myst left me mystified.

I'm not sure that's such a bad thing, too, but there are plenty of people who will no doubt set me straight. Don't.

- Brian Moore

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Swing Time


It was inevitable I'd stumble upon another loathsome American practice before too long, and thanks to one afternoon of overwhelming ennui, two bottles of my cheapest claret, three packages of a cigarette brand known as "Kools," and my occasional talent for infinite patience, I was exposed to the practice some colonials call "swinging."

It seems Ralph P_____, one of my gardeners, is a zealous practitioneer of the hobby. I plied the savage with the wine and the "smokes," as he called them weezily, after overhearing a conversation Ralph was having with his wife, if that's what you want to call her. (He certainly doesn't, as the term "ol' lady" is his preferred appellation for Daisy P_____.) In any event, he and Daisy were busily planning the logistics for an evening of "swinging" this weekend.

It seems the P____s had met another couple "on line" - meaning they had rendezvoused on the Internet, that agora of debauchery so popular with Americans. After some negotiations, the two pairs had decided to trade spouses for an evening of sexual deviance. Frankly, the nausea which racked my body prevented me from discerning most of the details, but the idea of Ralph trading his wife with an anonymous male inspired sufficiently revolting images in my mind's eye that the actual particulars hardly mattered. Need we know the contents of Falstaff's dinner to realize his alcohol-related vomitus is a sight best left unseen?

Feigning interest in him generally, I sat Ralph down for an employee review cum annual master/servant bonding ceremony - how 'bout that sporting franchise? and isn't she a comely wench? and the rest of it all. The "comely wench" bait was taken with less hesitancy than a shark devours chum, and Ralph and I were off to the races.

I'll spare you the goriest details, but suffice it to say there are semi-discrete organizations which facilitate the exchange of spouses for sexual gratification. As Ralph proved unwittingly, through both his personal appearance and with pictures of his "conquests," the practice attracts people who could be described charitably as louts, corpulents, mooncalfs, barbarians, maniacs and tomfools. It is also tremendously emasculating, as I had to inform Ralph, with emphasis.

After caning him several times, I told the nurseryman there was a perfectly acceptable alternative to "swinging" which doesn't involve depositing another man's penis into his wife's vagina like a dispenser rod inside a roll of toilet paper. We call it infidelity, which in the vulgate means "fooling around;" I practice it with frequency. His mouth opened wide, whether from pain or understanding, I did not know and could not care.

"You see - it's Ralph, right? You see, Ralph, males are adorned with the golden shackles of a biological imperative which compels them to plant their seed inside every vagina surrounded by what they consider a fine specimen of the female persuasion," I said. "It's a way for them to maximize their offspring, consequently asserting a certain dominion over the planet and, in an admittedly detached, unconscious way - and I'm not assuming you go for this stuff, uh, Ralph - achieve a sort of immortality."

The stench of wine, Kools, and incomprehension dominated my gardener.

"Or to put it another way, you can have your cake and eat it too," I said.

Another blank.

"Ralph, you get to fuck anyone you can lay your hands on and your wife doesn't, and she won't have a clue if you play your cards right," I said. Then I reached for my cane.

"Ohhhhhhhh," said Ralph. "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh. I get ya'. Some of 'dos guys, they got 'dos big cocks, okay?, and I don't like 'dos big cocks in my Daisy's pussy, you know? It gets her all stretched out, okay?" He bleated further utterances, which, though incomprehensible, I assumed were a continuation of this train of thought.

"Yes, Ralph. Okay."

- Twimbley Duddleston IV

Flyin' Fuckin' Robots

First, I suppose I gotta' apologize for takin' a few months off. I had to go to this thing called "rehab" where not only do they make you not drink, they tell you that you were a cocksucker for drinkin' except that you weren't a cocksucker because you really didn't have any control over it. Hey, doctor's orders.

The very name of the place - First Step Meadows - tells you all you need to know. It's for homos. I made a lot of people cry there with my straight talk, but that's for another day, because I got serious things on my mind.

My heart almost seized me when I opened up today's "Star-Ledger" and read about how there ain't shit we can do against an attack of flying robots. You think? Jesus. If there was anything we could do about flying robots, we would've done it by now, since the fear of flying robots - especially at O'Shea's - is so great it cuts through ideology and partisanship.

Our very humanity is what's gonna' bone us in the war against flying robots. The thing is, your average robot's got no conscience, no mind to speak of, regardless of his origin. He's just a machine, doing machine things and thinking machine thoughts. Maybe it wants some nuts and bolts for food, maybe it wants to get fucked up on some spiked motor oil. And, of course, it wants to fuck all our women, but that's pretty much it. There's nothing to stop them from takin' over the world; no second thoughts, no remorse like I kinda' felt after I broke a beer bottle on my son's face for actin' queer. And when they learn how to fly, it's over. They win.

(This isn't confirmed, but Butch - who's been right about this stuff before - told me that the robots were workin' on fag robots to assfuck all the males after the flying robots conquer the world. He said he's seen the prototype on the Internet - a big dildo attached to robot machine, and no pair of steel-plated drawers will be able to stop it!)

I guess we're just countin' the days until all that shit happens. So I'm gonna' have me a drink or ten at O'Shea's, and no robot-ignorant, rehab pansy is gonna' tell me otherwise.

- Frank McManus